Mark this down in your calendars: The Heart for Italian Fashionable Artwork (CIMA) has a post-Valentine’s Day present for all of us who love Italian artwork and design: From Depero to Rotella: Italian Industrial Posters Between Promoting and Artwork (Feb. 16–June 10). What made Italian design so compelling throughout the interwar years is the cross-pollination between avant-garde and industrial artwork, the interval throughout the nation’s financial growth.
Spanning 1926 (when Fortunato Depero exhibited the Venice Biennale a “quadro pubblicitario,” Squisito al selz) and 1957 (the 12 months through which the tv promoting present Carosello aired on Italy’s nationwide TV community RAI), the exhibition illustrates how the design of Italian industrial artists was linked to the inventive currents of the occasions.
Italian graphic design developed in a progressive course, influenced partly by painters/designers aligned with Futurism and pushing the boundaries of lithographic methods, photomontage and typography.
Among the rarities are 30 posters from major Italian institutions and corporate collections, as well as a few select private collections in the United States. Designers exhibited include Erberto Carboni, Depero, Nikolai Diulgheroff, Lucio Fontana, Max Huber, Bruno Munari, Marcello Nizzoli, Bob Noorda, Giovanni Pintori, Xanti Schawinsky, Mario Sironi and Albe Steiner, promoting design-centric companies that were important to the industrial boom, including Barilla, Campari, Olivetti, Fiat and Pirelli. The exhibition also includes art by Mimmo Rotella, whose collages and retro d’affiches employ fragments of the commercial.
